Cosmic Pursuits

Basic astronomy and night sky information

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The Sky This Month – May 2017

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Celestial Events

A superb image few Eta Aquarid meteors, some random meteors, and a bright Iridium flare taken on May 5, 2013 by David Kingham. This image was captured over three nights with two cameras!

2 May. Look for Venus in the eastern sky about an hour before sunrise. The planet in early May is preposterously bright, shining at about magnitude -4.7, enough to cast a shadow in very dark conditions. At the beginning of the month, in a telescope, you see about 1/4 of the planet’s face lit by the Sun. By the end of the month, you see the planet half lit as it dims slightly to magnitude -4.5. A truly beautiful ‘Morning Star’.

3 May. First-Quarter Moon, 02:47 UT [Read more…] about The Sky This Month – May 2017

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Star Tour – Cor Caroli and “La Superba”

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

An artist's rendering of the carbon star La Superba in the constellation Canes Venatici. Credit: Wikipedia Commons.
An artist’s rendering of the carbon star La Superba in the constellation Canes Venatici. Credit: Wikipedia Commons.

Turn your gaze to the sky under the handle of the Big Dipper and you’ll see only two reasonably bright stars. These are the 3rd-magnitude stars Cor Caroli and 4th-magnitude Chara. Cor Caroli (the “Heart of Charles”) was named by Edmund Halley after the martyred English King Charles I. It is a pretty double star, easily split in a small telescope even at 30-40x. The blue-white primary shines at magnitude 2.9; the fainter yellow companion is magnitude 5.6 some 19 arc-seconds away from the primary. The pair is about 110 light years away [Read more…] about Star Tour – Cor Caroli and “La Superba”

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The Beehive Cluster

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Deep Sky

The Beehive Star Cluster (Messier 44) in the constellation Cancer. Credit: Marc Van Norden - Flickr)
The Beehive Star Cluster (Messier 44) in the constellation Cancer. Credit: Marc Van Norden – Flickr/CC License)

The constellation Cancer is the faintest of the twelve constellations of the zodiac, and many casual stargazers pass it by when looking from bright Gemini to the striking group Leo to the east. In city skies, the constellation is hard to see at all. But there are some excellent sights in Cancer within reach of a telescope, including the superb star cluster M44, the Beehive Cluster, which is one of the finest objects for a wide-field telescope or a pair of binoculars [Read more…] about The Beehive Cluster

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The Sky This Month – April 2017

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: Celestial Events

The planet Jupiter (credit: NASA)
The planet Jupiter (credit: NASA)

1 April. Mercury reaches its greatest eastern elongation at 19° from the Sun. In the northern hemisphere, the speedy little planet is at its highest altitude of the year. Look for Mercury low over the western horizon about half an hour after sunset. The planet shines at a respectably bright magnitude -0.2 and, in a telescope, reveals a half-lit disk. Slightly fainter and much redder Mars lies about a fist’s-width above Mercury. Over the next week, you will see Mercury plunge back towards the horizon as it quickly makes its way around the Sun [Read more…] about The Sky This Month – April 2017

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Chesley Bonestell: Artist, Architect, Visionary

by Brian Ventrudo Filed Under: History and Famous Astronomers

A painting by Chesley Bonestell for NASA showing Werhner von Braun's concept for a space station.
A painting by Chesley Bonestell for NASA showing Wernher von Braun’s concept for an Earth-orbting space station. Image credit: NASA.

The artist and architect Chesley Bonestell painted scenes of space exploration that inspired an entire generation of astronomers, artists, writers, engineers and visionaries. If you’re over a certain age, you have doubtless seen his work, and if you’re a dedicated stargazer and space enthusiast, you were likely inspired by his vision of space travel. But Bonestell was more than a starry-eyed dreamer. He was an architectural artist, and he also helped the great rocket engineer Wernher von Braun develop his ideas by fleshing out von Braun’s sketches of moon rockets, satellites, and interplanetary spacecraft [Read more…] about Chesley Bonestell: Artist, Architect, Visionary

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